Tag Archives: marriage

The War Over Our Genitals

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Wed Dec 14, 6:43 PM ET
Pharmacists and Doctors Turn Judgmental
NEW YORK-After a 20-year-old Tucson woman is raped, she wastes three days searching for a pharmacy that stocks the “morning after” pill, each day of her search reducing the chances of the drug working. “When she finally did find a pharmacy with it,” reports the Arizona Daily Star, “she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.”

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! How on earth did they get these jobs? Why did they go into the healthcare profession? The fucking cunts! I hate people who push their twisted morality on others. If I had been that woman who was refused the morning after pill I would had run around the store SCREAMING at that woman and telling her the WHOLE story of my ordeal that lead me to her store and why!

And Kurt can attest that I would really do just that. How can she remain employable while refusing to do her job? In any other industry she would be fired! Even in the military they will put you in jail for refusing to kill people during times of war – and there they are killing actual people that can breath on their own not zygotes.

I’ve heard of women keeping the baby resulting from rape, but how can anyone in their right mind conclude that in all cases it’s best for all parties?

In Fort Worth, a CVS pharmacist tells Julee Lacey, 33, that she does not “believe in birth control” and will have to get her refill elsewhere. A San Diego County fertility clinic turns down a lesbian couple’s request for artificial insemination not, the doctors say, because of their sexual orientation, but because they’re not married. But gay marriage is illegal in California.

It’s not because you’re gay – right! It’s cause you can’t get married because you’re gay. Fucking dolt! What does marriage have to do with anything? It’s not like marriage makes it any less likely that the couple will split up down the road.

The American Pharmacists Association allows its members to refuse to fill prescriptions on moral grounds, as long as they refer their customers to a more open-minded colleague. But thirteen states have proposed or passed laws that would eliminate the referral requirement, and the trend is accelerating. Last year the Michigan State House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the “Conscientious Objector Policy Act,” a statute that would allow doctors, emergency service technicians and pharmacists to refuse to treat patients or fill prescriptions on moral, ethnical and religious grounds.

“The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, ‘We’re not going to fill that prescription for you because we don’t believe in it’ is astonishing,” says Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

When a soldier refuses an order to shoot someone, it’s virtually impossible to obtain “conscientious objector” status. A soldier who refuses to kill faces a court martial and possible prison sentence. But when a pharmacist refuses to dispense a drug that would prevent a woman from becoming pregnant with her rapist’s child, he’s merely “following his principles”–and enjoys the support of his state legislature.

Luke Vander Bleek, an Illinois pharmacist who says his Catholic faith led him to fight an Illinois rule that requires him to fill all prescriptions, including those for birth control, says: “I’ve always stopped short of dispensing any sort of product that I think endangers human life or puts the human embryo at risk.”

But Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich takes the side of patients: “It’s not the job of a drugstore or a pharmacist or someone who works in a drugstore to make those decisions or to pick and choose who gets birth control and who doesn’t.”

Yay! There are sane people in government.

How can society reconcile these two competing, yet equally compelling interests? Surely a medical professional should not be forced to perform procedures or dole out drugs that violate his or her personal beliefs.

Yes, yes they should. Cause it’s their FUCKING JOB!

I consider optional cosmetic surgery–face lifts, tummy tucks, boob jobs–degrading and obscene, symptoms of a shallow society’s contempt for natural beauty and aging. If I were a doctor, I would refuse to perform these operations or refer patients to a physician that did. On the other hand, people should be able to walk into a fertility clinic with the reasonable expectation of getting help to conceive a baby–whether they’re straight, gay, single or married.

Truthful advertising may prove more effective, and certainly more ethically sound, than a sweeping ban on discretion among healthcare professionals. For example, the Target store in Fenton, Missouri that refuses to fill birth control prescriptions–”I won’t fill it, it’s my right not to fill it,” Target’s pharmacist told a 26-year-old woman–should be forced to post a large back-lit sign outside its store to save would-be birth controllers the trouble of looking for parking. “No birth control,” the sign could read, or perhaps “sluts stay away!” Similarly the St. Louis-area Walgreens that recently suspended its pharmacist-refuseniks for violating Illinois’ don’t ask, must fill rule could post the chain’s support of reproductive rights out front.

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Marriage and Funerals

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Why don’t you and Margret get married? What is it with you Americans and marriage? You seem to have some kind of confusion that makes a ritual inseparable from the thing it announces. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but if you don’t have a funeral, you’re still dead, OK? No, we’re never going to get married. And we’ve spent the money it would have cost us on a loft conversion.

This is an email that I wrote to Mil Millington of the catchy website TMGAIHAA (Things my girlfriend and I have argued about)…

I love your site. It’s absolutely hilarious! But for me it wasn’t so much the arguments that you wrote about as it was the FAQs for Americans. I about died laughing at your answer to the marriage bit, comparing it to not having a funeral for the dead.

Unfortunately I’m an American and my boyfriend of six years and I get the marriage crap constantly. My whole family (including members I recently met for the first time) insist that I should never say never as if there is some really compelling reason to gather my whole family into one room and spend $10,000+ on a party for which I only get a piece of paper and some crappy dishes in return. Maybe if I thought my family would actually buy the things I would put on a wedding registry I might consider it.

A couple years ago my father asked me when Kurt and I would get married I said that we weren’t planning on it and he said, “But I’d like to have grandchildren someday.” I looked him and asked, “Since when is a piece of paper required in order to become pregnant? Do I have to explain the birds and bees to you?” I told him I plan on having children, they’ll be little bastards, but they’ll still be his grandchildren.

A simple no just didn’t cut it…a couple weeks ago I was back home in Alaska to attend a funeral. I got to see my dad in a suit for the first time in many many years, and it wasn’t the ‘70s pea-green one either. He was actually stunning like a picture I saw of him in his 20s dressed in his military uniform. I made the mistake of pointing out that it had been years since I had seen him dressed like that and how nice he looked. He told me that he had bought the suit for my wedding. REALLY! And when am I getting married? This is news to me!

Well I hope you found this at least mildly amusing, but yes I do intend to keep my day job.

Erica

*** Update April 22, 2005 ***

I got a reply from Mil

>I love your site. It’s absolutely hilarious!

Thank you. It’s very kind of you to say so.

> But for me it wasn’t so
>much the arguments that you wrote about as it was the FAQs for
>Americas.

Well, a bow to you for reading the FAQs at all. It shows great mettle.

>I’m unfortunately an American and my boyfriend of six years and I get
>the marriage crap constantly.

You could always move to England. Everything else is rubbish here, but no one would dream of suggesting that you ought to get married any more than they’d tell you that you ought to learn to ride a unicycle.

>A couple years ago my father asked me when Kurt and I would get
>married I said that we weren’t planning on it and he said, “But I’d
>like to have grandchildren someday.”

Nyuk. Aye, people do have some very odd mindsets. In the UK, 40% of children are born to unmarried parents, though, so it’s not really something that’s noticed. *Single* parents, yes; *unmarried* parents, no.

Your servant,

Mil.

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Mention of Gay Daughter a Cheap Trick, Lynne Cheney Says

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By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 14, 2004; Page A06
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa., Oct. 13 — Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, accused John F. Kerry on Wednesday night of “a cheap and tawdry political trick” and said he “is not a good man” after he brought up their daughter’s homosexuality at the final presidential debate.

What the fuck?…he’s not a good man for mentioning what was already brought up in the vice presidential debate? She should blame her husband for adding their daughter to the list of topics. Dick Cheney brought it up when he failed to tow the party line on August 25, 2004 and put his own two cents in about Bush’s little pet project of a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage.

From cnn.com Wednesday, August 25, 2004

At a campaign rally in this Mississippi River town, Cheney spoke supportively about gay relationships, saying “freedom means freedom for everyone,” when asked about his stand on gay marriage.

“Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with,” Cheney told an audience that included his daughter. “With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. … People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.

“The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that’s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage,” he said.

Mary Cheney, one of the vice president’s two daughters and an official of the Bush-Cheney campaign, has been open about her lesbian status. The candidates were asked if they believe homosexuality is a choice, and President Bush did not mention Mary Cheney. Then Kerry said, “If you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.”

Oh how awful of Kerry to suggest that Mary Cheney is just being who she is…the gall of that man for suggesting that there isn’t something horribly wrong with Lynne Cheney’s daughter. That is just so disrespectful!

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. “The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I’m speaking as a mom,” she said. “What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

Yes it’s really is a cheap trick for him to suggest that the government has no business meddling in the bedrooms of consenting adults, and that everyone including Lynne Cheney’s daughter should have equal rights to see their life partner in the hospital and to share custody of their partner’s biological and/or adopted children. I mean if you just simply ignore the divorce rate you’ll know that marriage is just so damn sacred that it should only be between those who can have intercourse in the only acceptable fashion!

Steven Fisher, communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian political organization, said Kerry “was speaking to millions of American families who, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members.”

Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), also made a reference to the sexual orientation of Cheney’s daughter, during the vice presidential debates, and Republicans complained that it was an underhanded way of trying to hurt the Bush-Cheney ticket with religious conservatives.

If this hurt the Bush-Cheney ticket with the religious conservatives it’s their own fault for not following the wholly babble to the letter. They should have had Mary Cheney put to death when she came out of the closet.

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. — Lev.20:13

I just can’t even believe that gay marriage is a political issue. The government should have absolutely no part in marriage (that includes tax relief/penalties for being the focus during a religious ritual). Marriage is strictly a religious union that should only be recognized which ever church performs the ceremony. If the religious clubhouse door has a “no gays allowed” sign, and you’re a homosexual that wants a marriage find a more accepting place. If you want the government to recognize your union whether gay, straight, or undecided you should be able to get a legal contract called a civil union! As long as all participants in the contract are of the determined legal age and are not signing under duress who the fuck gives a shit!!! Nobody seems to mind collecting taxes from homosexuals…they pay into the system they should have the rights, and privileges from the government that go with it.

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Sorry you’re only news-worthy

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Publishing notices of gay marriages stirs controversy

By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the cultural, social and political currents swirling around marriage.

News articles listing many of the rights and benefits denied gays and lesbians because they can’t legally marry may overlook at least one: having wedding announcements published in their hometown paper.

Content with reporting about the gay-marriage movement with neutrality, some newspapers — particularly smaller publications — are finding themselves pulled, unwillingly, into the fray.

As gays and lesbians in recent weeks have gone to Portland or San Francisco to obtain marriage licenses, papers have been left to figure out how to deal with requests to publicly announce their new unions.

Take the Yakima Herald-Republic, a 39,000-circulation paper in Eastern Washington owned by The Seattle Times Co.

The paper had written extensively about a local couple, Jane Newall and Deborah Vuillemot, who traveled to Portland in March to marry. Yet it found itself in a quandary when the women returned from Oregon and presented their wedding announcement for publication in the Sunday Life news section.

“They had no stated policy on the issue,” Newall said. “They had covered same-sex unions and written extensively about couples who had gone to Portland to marry. And their editorial position was in favor of civil unions. Given those things, we figured they’d put it in.”

But three days after the women made their request, editor Sarah Jenkins called to say their announcement would not be published alongside other wedding and engagement announcements. A new policy, Jenkins told them, established since the announcement was submitted, reserves those pages for state-recognized marriages only.

We don’t have a policy, so we’ll just make one up that doesn’t make us look too bad.

engagement announcements for same-sex couples because “they can’t at this time lead to a marriage recognized in Washington,” Jenkins wrote in a column explaining the paper’s position.

This lesbian couple is only good for a story on a heated topic, but we don’t really consider them the same as ourselves. And we don’t want to stick our necks out too far even though we’re the only new paper for miles we don’t want people to get angry when we treat everyone fairly.

“The conversation kept coming back to the point that these were not legally recognized in Washington,” said Bob Crider, Yakima Herald-Republic managing editor. “We’re not an arm of the state, no. But until the state figures out what it wants to do, we felt comfortable with the position we took.”

We just blame the state for not being progressive so we don’t look bad to the gay community and the saw-toothed rednecks in the area won’t burn crosses on our lawns.

The paper offered Newall and her partner and other gay couples the option of publishing announcements as paid advertisements in the “Celebrations” section.

We realize your money is as green as any that comes from a heterosexual, so if you want to pay us for discriminating against you that’s fine with us.

Newall and Vuillemot — insulted — called that “separate but equal” treatment. “We felt it was discriminatory, since the only weddings not legally recognized by the state were same-sex marriages. We felt that what they were telling us was that we were newsworthy but not worthy of being treated as human beings.”

An increasing number of newspapers in recent years have been publishing announcements of same-sex commitment ceremonies and civil unions. Many added wedding announcements last year after gay marriages were legalized in parts of Canada.

About 245 newspapers around the United States either run same-sex union announcements or say they would be willing to do so if asked by a local resident, according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

And while papers of all sizes are grappling with the issue since thousands of gay couples have wed in Canada, Portland, San Francisco, New York and New Mexico, smaller publications are having a harder time because many still run wedding and engagement announcements for free. It wasn’t that long ago that newspapers struggled with another gay issue — whether to list partners’ names in obituary notices.

“I don’t know anywhere where marriages are being performed legally,” said Rowland Thompson, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association, which represents newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington and British Columbia.

In a conversation earlier this week, he said he’d not heard from member papers on the matter. “This whole thing began in anarchy. It’s a cultural war, and as a newspaper I can see where you’d not want to get in the middle of it.”

Kelly McBride, ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Fla., school dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists, said that by publishing these announcements, newspapers aren’t making a statement about the legality of gay marriage.

“There are a lot of people about whose marriage we may raise an eyebrow,” she said. “But we don’t disenfranchise them from the paper.”

She said papers need to make sure they are applying the same standard to everyone who wants to announce a wedding: If they ask for legal proof of marriage from gay couples, they must ask that of all couples — a practice not in place at the Herald-Republic.

McBride recalled the decision a few years ago by the Spokesman Review in Spokane, where she worked at the time, to separate same-sex unions from other wedding announcements. “The editors decided (same-sex union announcements) would not be treated equally, they would put them under a different heading and they would not get a photo.”

McBride said she argued about the historical significance of what the paper was doing: “There was a time when other people also could not get access to those very pages: people of color and in interracial marriages. Given that, we should err on the side of equality.”

Ok what she’s saying is good, but “people of color”? I guess only the transparent people were treated as humans. I don’t care if it’s the latest politically correct phrase. It sounds stupid. White and off-white are colors too damn it!

The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer this summer will launch sections that will include paid wedding announcements. Because the idea was conceived before gay marriage licenses were issued, advertising officials need to evaluate how same-sex wedding announcements will appear, Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin said.

Meanwhile, at The Oregonian in Portland — ground-zero for recent legal skirmishes on gay marriage — all paid wedding announcements, from gay and straight couples, run together in the Celebration pages of the paper’s Living section.

Advertising Director Dennis Atkin said the announcements, which the paper began running less than a year ago, are for any couple with a legal bond: “If a couple wants to pay for it, we’ll run it,” he said.

Commitment ceremonies and civil unions are listed separately.

At the Wenatchee World, in Central Washington, editors are trying to come up with a policy nearly two months after a local gay couple requested a wedding announcement.

Ken Robertson, executive editor of the Tri-City Herald, said his paper had the outline of a policy a few weeks ago when a local gay couple asked to announce their wedding. Marriage notices from gay couples are listed under a separate heading — “Announcements” — from those for traditional unions, which are listed under “Weddings.”

Robertson said the two men withdrew their request after learning their announcement would be treated differently. “We understood their concern,” Robertson said. “We were trying to address reader concern that these aren’t officially weddings, since state law doesn’t recognize them as such.

“This is clearly a hot-button issue here and in every town in the country.”

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